In the Winter 1974 issue of the Pakistan Development Review,
Messrs: Azhar and Sharif have published an article entitled "The Effects
of Tax Holiday on Invest¬ment Decisions: An Empirical Analysis." It was
an interesting article in a very useful area of research. Apart from
other subsidies, tax holidays are granted to encourage investment
generally, but in certain areas particularly. Thus a study -on tax
holiday is important from the policy point of view as it helps decide
whether to reintroduce the tax holiday policy which was abolished in
1972. Unfortunately, there are some conceptual and methodological
problems in the study so that the results presented by Azhar and Sharif
are rather suspect. However, before taking up these problems, let it be
pointed out that the conclusions drawn by Azhar and Sharif regarding
ineffectiveness of the tax holiday policy in encouraging private
investment is not quite correct. Their study showed that 20 percent of
firms would not have invested if they had not been granted tax holidays.
A policy which en¬courages investment by 20 percent cannot be called
ineffective. Before drawing any such conclusions, one is advised to look
at the relative effectivenesses of different investment-promoting
policies.
Role of ribosomal protein mutations in tumor development (Review)
